


Staring Straight

by Runespoor



Category: Marvel (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You could call it growing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staring Straight

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Disney’s _Mulan_ ’s “Reflection”.

First she followed Charles' advice.

It didn't entirely suit her, and she thought it was like her skin was a little bit off, like clothing not quite to her size.

Then she met Erik, and he spoke like her blondness was too _small_ for her, like it couldn't contain her. It was a dizzying thought, and one she liked very much. Shifting from pale pink to electric blue, swapping Charles' sister for someone Erik looked like with a glint of appreciation and complicity, it filled her with vertigo like falling in love, and on her own two feet she looked in her mirror.

After their worst argument yet, two years and seven battles after she left her brother wounded on a beach, Magneto - Erik - hurled at her that without him she'd still be trying to win Charles' approval.

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow, and drew herself to his full height. Erik - she was pleased to note - couldn't quite conceal a slight recoil at seeing her taking his form so easily. "Is that what you think? That it was about Charles' approval, and you set me free? Do you think I'm trying to win _your_ approval now, Erik?"

"I think no such thing," he lied. Looking to the left.

She sighed, and took back her favored form. Magneto raised his eyes again, looking back at her, steady. "I'm telling the truth, you know," he insists. "I wouldn't lie to you about this."

And it was a sign of the times that he needed both qualifications for this sentence to be true. He wouldn't have lied about freedom when they'd met, whoever he was talking to, as long as they weren't his enemies. He wouldn't have lied to her.

"People change," she told Magneto. He looked at her in blank incomprehension, and she stifled another sigh. What was it about him and Charles both that made them so obsessed with mutations they wouldn't see change as a part of people's life if it stared them in the face?

She was outgrowing Magneto's vision. Soon she'd leave, before the tension broke over so dramatically they wouldn't part on good terms.

Mystique looked in the mirror, and started to figure out what she wanted to do next.


End file.
